APPENDIX: Interviews between Refugees International and North Korean RefugeesInterviews 1-10Interviews 11-20 Interviews 21-30 Interviews 31-40 Interviews 41-47 INTERVIEW 11 WOMAN, Age 37, her Daughter, Age 15, and her Son, Age 13 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Onsong FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: 1997 In 1997 their whole family came to China. In April 2002, the husband, wife, and son were arrested. The daughter happened to be out; “She was lucky not to be there.” They were deported and sent to the county labor-training center because there are too many cases in the big training center. They did construction and paved roads. The family was together in the training center. They got bad quality corn porridge to eat. In June 2002, after finishing working at the center her husband, son, and she returned to China. The son was delivered across the river. They took the bus to come here. For bus money they had had to swallow money and retrieve it three days later. The daughter had stayed in China the whole time. After returning to China in June 2002, they farmed. In September 2002, there was an order from the government and the police came to the house again and they were all arrested and deported again. After four days in the training center, they were sent to the local training center for 20 days to harvest. This time at the training center was harder because the same guard was there. In October 2002, only she and her daughter came; her husband and son stayed in North Korea because it’s difficult to come to China as a family. They came again to their current house in China. The police know they’re there because they’re always returning to the same house, but the police don’t bother them unless they get local orders to round up people. In February 2003 when her husband and son tried to come they were arrested. Her son was sent to an orphanage and her husband was sent to a local training center. She heard from a neighbor woman at the border that her husband was sick and died three days after being released from the center. The son was arrested four times for trying to cross the border to return to China and each time he was returned to the orphanage. He finally crossed successfully in March 2003. In April 2003, she and her daughter were arrested again. The son was not arrested and stayed in China by himself. The church took care of him. She and her daughter didn’t stay for long at the local training center. There was a different guard at the center so he didn’t recognize them. She told a guard that she wanted to go see her husband’s grave and then they fled back to China. She wants to take her family to South Korea. If they are arrested one more time, she doesn’t know what they’ll do. The daughter wants to go to South Korea with her mother. Until last year she could go to school. INTERVIEW 12 WOMAN, 28, and her Daughter, 4 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Unknown FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: 1998 She came to China with her older brother, who is 45. Her brother was familiar with the border situation and he knows people in China. He does some smuggling across the border so he returned to North Korea. She has no contact with him. One reason she left North Korea is because her family is in the hostile class. When she came to China she had three choices: 1) Go to South Korea; 2) Marry a Chinese man; or 3) Take care of an elderly person. She was afraid to go to South Korea because once that became known to the North Korean Government her family in North Korea would get into trouble. She was introduced to a Korean-Chinese man and married him. Since she was educated, she knew about life outside of North Korea. As she got older she wanted more freedom. She wanted to be a teacher in China but found it impossible. She used to be a teacher in a primary school in North Korea. She learned a little teaching. Most teachers were educated and knew something about the world, but they didn’t dare leave because the Government gave them a salary and a teaching certificate, which is an honor that they can’t throw away. Living conditions in China are much more comfortable, but sometimes she wonders why she didn’t go to South Korea. She missed her mother so her brother brought her mother to China in February 2003. But her mother was arrested and deported. INTERVIEW 13 WOMAN, Age 26 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Ch’ongjin FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: 1999 She lived with her parents in North Korea but life was hard. She heard that if you went to China you would have enough to eat. She asked her cousin who had been in China to take her there. “There is a rumor that Chinese treat North Korea women like slaves or abuse them. I was afraid of businessmen that take women from North Korea.” So she pretended that she was a man and she went to a house that her cousin knew. She hid in a room for two days and asked the owner to marry her to a peasant. She said she didn’t want to be sold. The house found a man for her and brought him to see her so they could see if they liked each other and they did. Her cousin returned to North Korea. For a single male, it’s hard to live in China because a North Korean man never marries a Korean-Chinese woman, so he had no choice but to return. Her father passed away. She has a mother, older sister and older brother. Her older sister is here but they have no connection. She now has a one-month-old daughter. “Some people here treat me like someone from a lower class because they think North Korea is poor, but it’s good living here. I’m happy here. If North Korea opens up in the future and one can make money there, then I’ll go there with my husband.” INTERVIEW 14 WOMAN, Age 27, and her Daughter, Age 4 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Onsong FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: 1998 She came across the river by herself and met a man at the border village. She lived there for a while but they separated because he was a thief and got arrested. She then came to Yanji. She worked at a restaurant and met another man who she’s with now. She worked in a brick factory in North Korea but there was no salary so she decided to come to China. She has no family in North Korea. Her parents died in 1999 and her siblings went in separate directions. Her father came to China and stayed for a while but when he went to North Korea to get her mother he got arrested and died. She doesn’t know what she’ll do in the future because the police and the insecure environment make it difficult to live here. “If the government would allow us to live freely, then I’d like to stay.” Her daughter will go to school next year. She thinks the police won’t arrest children. INTERVIEW 15 MAN, Age 32, Woman (his wife), age 31, and their baby, Age seven months PLACES OF ORIGIN: Kyonsong (man), Unknown (woman) FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: 1997 (man), 2001 (woman) In 1997 he was in the army but was discharged and came home. He wasn’t assigned a job. Many people were dying of starvation and no rice was given. So he came to Musan to find a job. There he heard that people were coming to China. He crossed and was caught in three months and deported. He was sent to a prison in Ch’ongjin for ten days. He escaped and came directly to China again. She heard that if you went to China you would have enough to eat. In 1998, the Chinese police were searching for North Koreans so he moved to an isolated, mountainous region. His wife is North Korean. She had no parents but her uncle said he’d find her a husband. In 2001, she came with her uncle to China and they met the husband the next day and got married. The husband and wife were arrested separately in 2002. They had been living in another area in the mountains for about a year. Border guards had come to that place several times but no one was caught until August 2002 when the husband was arrested in a nearby town while getting food. While he was in North Korea, his wife was afraid, so she lived in the house of the manager of the shelter where they were living. Someone reported her, so she was arrested and deported on October 18, 2002 at 9:00 am. Meanwhile her husband crossed the border at 11:00 am that very day to return to China. While in prison she gave birth and stayed for 12 days. The people in her hometown gave the officers money so that she’d be released. The husband said, “In 1997, it was much harder in the prison. In the past couple years so many people have been crossing that it’s out of the ability of the North Korean Government to handle all of the prisoners. But it is still very inhumane.” He was in a prison room about 5 square meters and about 40 people stayed there. They knelt and could not move at all. “You even have to sleep in that position or you will be punished.” His wife gave birth in that position after she was arrested in October 2002. He doesn’t want to go back to North Korea. Sometimes he wants to go to South Korea but he knows it would be really hard. Plus, he knew people in the North Korean prison who had tried to go to South Korea and were caught. People who tried to go to South Korea are sent somewhere else and they are killed. The first question they ask you when you are deported to North Korea is “Have you been to church?” Those that say “yes” will be killed right away or sent to a prison camp for life. He was in the army for ten years. Everybody was starving. He was in Pyongyang and had only a small amount of rice. The soldiers would go out at night and steal from houses or sell their boots or other things. “In 1997 and 1998 many people died from starvation. Those that weren’t smart or strong enough died. The people that are alive now know how to live and do whatever it takes to survive.” Those that survived the famine still know how to live. People in the army want to come to China but if they’re caught then generations of their family will be punished harshly. While he was in the army his mother died of cancer. He doesn’t know what happened to his father, two brothers and sister. “Living here, although we have to hide, is like living in paradise compared to North Korea. Our only plan is surviving day by day.” INTERVIEW 16 WOMAN, Age 47, and her Son, Age 14 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Unknown FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: March 2002 In 2002 her 22-year-old daughter disappeared so she went to China to find her. Her husband had died. A year later she found out that the daughter had been sold to a Chinese man. There are so many things here. To have one bowl of rice in North Korea you have to work all day or more than a day, but here it’s easier. You can eat three meals of rice a day. In North Korea she heard the name of the man who sold her daughter and where he came from, but when she went there, he had left. If she’s caught and deported, returning to her hometown might be the only way she can find out more information on where her daughter is. While crossing the border she met someone she knows who hooked her up with an organization that helped her. “Living here, although we have to hide, is like living in paradise compared to North Korea. Our only plan is surviving day by day.” Her son came in January 2003. The woman in this safe house who gave birth in the prison (See Interview 15 above) went to find him in his village after she was released. While living here she couldn’t eat without thinking of her son in North Korea. Her son says that life in China is good but he misses having friends. In North Korea, he went to his second year in junior high school but then had to drop out when his mother moved to China because he moved to a rural area to live with his grandmother. He’s missed a year of school. There’s no food at North Korean schools. They want to stay for another year and then go back to North Korea to farm. INTERVIEW 17 WOMAN, Age 43, and Son, Age 11 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Unknown FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: 1997 In 1997 her husband went to China, met a good person and worked for his family for a little money to buy oil to bring home. Once he came home all he would think about was China. He was obsessed with China. Another man went to China and came back to North Korea with her husband. This man had relatives in China and he brought a TV home that proved he had been there. When that man was caught, he told the authorities that her husband had been to China as well. So her husband had to leave North Korea right away to escape arrest. All six of them went to China. They had no relatives in China so it was hard to settle for a long time. Her husband died two years ago and her three daughters got married in China (two to Chinese men and one to a Korean-Chinese man). She now has a husband again. Her first daughter disappeared in 1997 and they later heard that she was kidnapped and sold. When her husband was dying, someone found the daughter so now they’re in contact with her. Her second daughter is in the area and the third is in another province. After her husband died, she was introduced to a Korean-Chinese man; someone got money for giving her to an old poor man. She was unhappy with her new husband because she didn’t speak Chinese and the new husband didn’t like her son. So she saved a bit of spare cash every time she was given money to get groceries. These savings allowed her to leave him and come to Yanji. Her North Korean husband was an artist (a painter) and a dentist and did some carpentry. She worked on a farm and worked really hard and was recognized for her farming. When Kim Il Sung died she was the only one from her village invited to go to Pyongyang and see the dead body of Kim Il Sung. It was mentally hard for her to leave North Korea but because her husband was in danger she had to leave. She got caught in 1999 and was deported but because she was well known in North Korea they didn’t send her to a labor camp. She lived there one month and five days and then returned to China because families in North Korea couldn’t help her with food. She wants to stay in China because she doesn’t know when the system in North Korea will change. Kim Il Sung was a really good man and wanted people in North Korea to live richly but he couldn’t fulfill his dreams. “Kim Jong Il isn’t like his father. He never had war and was really spoiled. He didn’t know the life of the normal people. People under him gave him false reports and this sucked the blood of the normal people.” Her sister’s whole family died of starvation like many other people. The situation is terrible. “I don’t believe there will be change in my lifetime. No one believes it will change in his or her lifetime. Only unification can do something.”“I don’t believe there will be change in my lifetime. No one believes it will change in his or her lifetime. Only unification can do something.” INTERVIEW 18 GIRL, Age 15 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Najin-Sonbong FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: February 2003 She came into China with her father and brother. Her mother had disappeared and life was very hard without her, so they decided to leave. At first they lived in the countryside. There are many abandoned homes and they all lived together. Just one week after they crossed the border, they were arrested and deported by the Chinese police. When she crossed again, she came by herself. She was spotted by some Christian activists along the border and they brought her to Hunchun City. She was told to pray and that if the North Korean situation gets better than she should go to North Korea and spread the word. This was the first time that she heard about God and prayer. She lives with a North Korean woman and a Chinese man here. She’s not allowed to study much here, but she studies the Bible in the morning and Chinese in the afternoon. She wants to study the Bible more and hopes to educate people about religion. She wants to go back to North Korea if the situation gets better. Today is the first time she’s left her home for two reasons: 1) fear of the Chinese police, and 2) the desire to study the Bible more. Because she believes in God, she has no problems in China. She went up to the 3rd grade and her brother never went to school. Their family had no shoes, clothes or bags, so they couldn’t go to school. INTERVIEW 19 WOMAN, Age 39 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Ch’ongjin FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: 1999 Her parents and two brothers died of tuberculosis. Since her family had all died, she decided to leave North Korea. She had been married but her husband had died of starvation. She had two kids: one died after she left North Korea. She gave her other child, who is five, to a North Korean family and told them that she’d go to China to make money. She sent them 1000 RMB. The first time she worked as a housekeeper. She met a North Korean man who said he’s a Christian and she believed him, but he stole all of her money. So she prayed and went to church and met a Christian Chinese man. She married him before she got arrested. When she was arrested she first went to Hunchun jail and was then deported to North Korea. She went to the police station and then went to Ch’ongjin provincial detention center for two months and worked in a factory. She got three meals a day (soup that had only one piece of cabbage and much salt; she also received residue from milling corn). Every meal was like this. A month after she was released she returned to China. Between 1999 and 2002, the situation in North Korea had gotten worse. She has an older sister who told her how bad the food situation is. When she was deported and then released in North Korea, she tried to find her son but she didn’t have an ID so she didn’t go to the house. But her elder sister went to check up on the boy several times and the family demanded money to bring up the child. The elder sister had no money. Her sister said the boy looked like he was malnourished. In the future she wants to go to another place in China or back to North Korea so that she can spread the word. INTERVIEW 20 MALE, Age 27 PLACE OF ORIGIN: Undok FIRST ARRIVAL IN CHINA: June 2003 He had just arrived in China three days before. He had a very difficult life in North Korea. He had no food or money. He left his parents and three brothers in North Korea and came alone. When he crossed the border and saw the situation in China he wondered why North Korea is so poor. He has no relatives in China and wondered how he could make money. He wants to return soon to North Korea to give help to his family. He and his parents worked on the farm. One of his brothers works on the farm, one goes to elementary school and the other goes to middle school. There is no food at school. He walked for 12 hours to get to Yanji. He didn’t know there’d be help here; he just knew about the shelter manager. A friend in his hometown had told him about the manager. In North Korea they work on the farm and are provided food by the farm manager. Last year their six-person family got 150 kilograms of food per year per family member. The 150 kilograms includes the cornhusks. There’s no other way to get food. If they don’t complete the planting, the farm manager gives them a little corn and they have to buy food. But if they don’t have money, the farm manager won’t give money. He goes to the mountains to collect medicinal plants and then sells them in the market. Now, too many people are doing this. He can only collect one kilogram of medicinal plants in a day. They can only be collected in the spring and fall. One kilogram sells for 450 won (if you get a good buyer from China). But generally you get 400 won in North Korea. His father has some kind of heart disease and low blood pressure. His mother can’t walk for very long because of pain from the sciatic nerve. One of his brothers had kidney problems. There’s no medicine available. They have no possessions to sell in the market because they’ve already sold everything. He then started asking his interviewers questions about whether there will be a war in North Korea, how outsiders can help the North Korea people, and so on. “Most North Korean people think about the war. If war breaks out, it’s good because that’s the only solution. Most North Koreans think the North Korean regime should be changed. That’s the only way for North Koreans to survive. The food from the U.S., the UN and South Korea was not provided to the common people in North Korea, so it’s a very useless thing. The only way to save the North Korean people is war because internal collapse is impossible in North Korea. Everybody knows that international food doesn’t reach the people. It’s North Korean policy that every donation from the outside goes to the army, not the common people. The North Korean political system is like a military regime. The army is taught they have to give their life for Kim Jong Il. In North Korea, from baby to adult, North Koreans are educated about the family of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. During a day of school you have 3-4 hours of Kim Il Sung’s family history. 40 students used to be in a class but since 1996 or 1997 it’s about 20. Every student in the school must ‘battle for crops’ and work in the fields.” |
Executive Summary Introduction The Scope of the Problem The Motivation for Leaving The Situation in China Treatment Upon Deportation The Case for Refugee Status for North Koreans in China Protection for North Koreans in China South Korean Policy United States Policy and the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 Recommendations ----------- Notes Appendix: Interviews between Refugees International and North Korean Refugees Acknowledgments |
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Acts of Betrayal: Interviews 11-20
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